


Maybe Breathe Less

by Rubyshade



Category: Half-Life
Genre: Canon Divergent, Gen, but probably not that far. im not a big fan of AUs, half life alyx compliant by nature of taking place duing half life alyx, idk how far we're diverging we'll see what happens, infected alyx, this is definitely one of those "hey what if-" fics lol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 18:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30076143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubyshade/pseuds/Rubyshade
Summary: listen...my notes for this fic say "welcome to the northern star spore cafe" so you probably can guess what's going down
Kudos: 5





	Maybe Breathe Less

After the damp, stinking inside of the Northern Star, Alyx gasped to breathe in the air on the roof. There was a metallic taste on her tongue, a dryness to her throat, and the chorded hum of the substation vibrated in her chest cavity. A high whine, almost inaudible, stung her ears and made her dizzy. She had to take care of the cables.

But the rattle and whine, the taste and the way the air seemed to elude her, persisted as the immense cables fell away from the clamps, and as the vortigaunt grasped her arms and got to their feet.

It persisted down to the plaza. It persisted through two chargers, two magazines, two shotgun shells, two energy cells, and a grenade filched off a masked corpse. It persisted as she crept through the wide, black gate and over a pile of dumpsters, panting with adrenaline, and she felt her pulse in the ticking grenade she hurled back over her cover.

A few hours ago, a headcrab had leapt from a vent and fastened to her face – she remembered the wet heat and the things-in-jars smell, the scrape of hard teeth down her cheeks as it had struggled to keep its grip. She had dug her fingers into its flesh, ripping it from her face and thrown it into a deep drainage well, where she heard it squeal as it hit the bottom. Now her sweat stung as it trickled into the scabbing gouges, and she wiped her cheek on the cleanest part of her shoulder she could find. Her hands shook.

She was behind cover in a depressing side yard, a slab of concrete for apartment dwellers to look over. There was a structure in the middle that had once been a brick shed, now crumbling, and it was behind one of those walls that she now knelt, hands in her bag. One set of cleated, heavy footsteps, a single, garbled voice, too close for comfort. One more magazine, trembling hands in the bottom of her bag. A world gone distant around eject, replace, pull the slide.

Two cold, cyan eyes. She pulled the trigger and the shots buried themselves in the wide neck. The first burst shredded the armor at close range, the second burst spraying hot, red blood into the air. It gave a choked gurgle and fell to its knees. The third burst went between the eyes, and as the blood pooled, it was still in the yard again, the silence broken only by the breaths she pulled in, an almost musical thinness. In, out. In, out. In…

She could hear the substation still, a ringing in her ears. Maybe she hadn’t thrown the grenade far enough. She breathed. Her lungs felt dense.

“Gettin’ pretty crowded down here, Russ,” she said with some difficulty, hauling herself to her feet.

“Combine are gonna hear you coming at that rate,” Russell said in her ear. She made her way into the apartment block, started up the rubble-coated stairs. “Sure you’re alright, Alyx?”

“Sure,” she said. The sun streaming through the top of the stairs was warm. “I think I just need…” in, out, “I think I just need a minute to, uh.” In, out. “take a minute.”

She could huddle between some of those crates up there and get her breath back. Just a couple more steps.

“You sure? I knew a kid with asthma when I was in mid – ALYX, MINE!”

“Huh-? U _h-_ ”

Alyx felt her heart squeeze in her chest, and she stopped short on the last step, grasping for the railing. The thin blue laser was next to invisible in the sun. She had almost walked right through it.

“Wow. That was close. Alyx, are you…”

“Russ, I think,”

She edged a few steps down, leaned on the wall, sank to the floor. The ammonia meat of the hotel was burning her nose, clogging her throat. Her multitool dug into her back.

A muffled “ah, cripes.” “Alyx?” it sounded like he was shuffling through things on his desk. “Alyx, I need you to talk to me. Stay with me.” A soft “ah”, a papery rustle. “Are you bleeding? If so, can you elevate the wound and wait for resc- ah, no.” Another rustle. “if you happen to have a-“

“I’m ok, Russ.” In. She inspected herself as best she could without moving. She had been shot before, once, with an Earth gun – there was no blood now, no warmth but the sunlight, nothing pooling. No growing, white-hot pain, only the taste of sticky, humid Xen.

Her eyes drifted shut for a moment on the step, her shaken brain beginning to trace that train of thought, when it was arrested by something much, much worse.

“Russ?” She choked out. “Something’s. Some,” she breathed, “something’s moving in. My chest.” Alarm pulsed through her. “Russ? Something –“

“That’s your heart, Alyx. It’s supposed to be moving,”

“No, nonono-“

It was not her heart, currently racing. It was a place where things were not supposed to move. “Russ, it’s not-“

A tickle, like a muscle twitch, buried deep under her ribcage, raw and almost painful, something unused to being touched. Ammonia rose in her swollen throat and she leaned over and retched on the step.

“Eugh, ok, ok, listen, Alyx, listen, here’s what we’re gonna do,”

The sun was warm, but Alyx shivered. The ringing in her ears grew louder than the sound of her breathing, and it was all she could do to bring her gun to her hand, just in case, before the world dissolved.

**Author's Note:**

> :) in which alyx manifests our fears of the plague, i think
> 
> special thanks to the coven for helping to make this space to play in which i've been thinking about since december.  
> there will be at least a little more. eventually. I'm not gonna kill alyx vance now am I???


End file.
